Vivienne Westwood's renewable energy crowdfunding site is shutting down

British
designer Vivienne Westwood is seen backstage before her
Spring/Summer 2017 women's ready-to-wear collection show during
Fashion Week in Paris, France October 1, 2016.REUTERS/Charles
Platiau

LONDON — A UK peer-to-peer platform for the renewable energy
sector backed by designer Vivienne Westwood is selling off its
assets after regulation changes meant the company couldn't make
the model work.

Trillion Fund, founded in 2011, announced in a press release on
Monday that it is selling off its core assets, including its
white label-ready peer-to-peer funding platform, a crowdfunding
platform, and FCA permissions to operate in the space.

Trillion Fund made peer-to-peer loans to the renewable energy
sector and says it raised £5 million from 8,000 members over its
lifetime. Celebrated British designer and climate change activist
Dame Vivienne Westwood
invested £1 million in the company in 2014. Westwood owns
just over 27% of the company, according to recent filings.

Westwood told the Telegraph at the time of her investment: "There
is no better way of saving the planet than investing in the
companies and technologies that have the potential to drastically
reduce carbon emissions."

Trillion Fund CEO Theresa Burton blames the closure of Trillion
Fund's platform on the government's removal of subsidies for
renewable energy companies in 2015, saying it killed demand for
loans. She said in an emailed statement that the company was
"unable to secure sufficient deal flow to support its focus on
renewable energy."

The company last year tried to pivot to more general crowdfunding
but Burton says it couldn't drum up enough demand to support the
business. Burton says in the emailed statement: "Although the
concept was warmly received in initial market research, it was
challenging to get to the deal flow volumes required to scale
fast enough."

Theresa Burton, CEO of
Trillion Fund.Trillion
Fund

As well as raising money from Westwood, Trillion Fund raised over £640,000 from
investors on crowdfunding platform Seedrs in December 2014 at
a valuation of £4.5 million. Burton told BI she expects a
"detrimental impact" for shareholders as it is an "asset sale not
an on-going business sale." But she added that it is not a "fire
sale." Investors have already been told about the sale process.

Trillion Fund has been running a private sale process since
October and Burton said the company decided to put out a press
release to broaden the potential pool of interested parties. The
company is pitching itself for sale to a lending business with an
existing customer base that is looking to get into the
peer-to-peer market. Burton said she is already in talks with
"five or six" potentially interested parties.

Peer-to-peer allows investors — either individuals or companies —
to lend directly to either companies or people looking to borrow
money over online platforms. £8.7 billion has been lent over
P2P platform in the UK since the concept was invented in 2005,
according to AltFi
data. However, the majority has been lent by major players
such as Funding Circle, Zopa, and RateSetter.

Burton echoed this sentiment, saying: "There are a lot of small
peer-to-peer platforms out there like ourselves who I think are
going to struggle to get the deal flow needed."

Burton told BI she believes peer-to-peer platforms must reach a
loan book of at least £80 million to reach break-even. Trillion
Fund only reached a loan book of £3 million, she says, which
drove the decision to "call time." The existing loan book will
continue to be run down.